Who Is Your Best Friend?

This week I want to highlight the importance of friendship, as ‘World Friendship Day’ approaches tomorrow, not only for our happiness but also for our healing.

Now I know there may be a few of you out there for whom this is a tough subject and in reading the first line, I may have already stirred your emotions. There may also be others who have lots of friends and think “what has this got to do with me?”

Well this subject is important to us all and I want to discuss the most important friendship of all. That is our relationship with ourselves.

When we look holistically at healing, there is a big barrier that often comes up in someone’s progression and it is not necessarily lack of home exercises, poor treatments, or not enough time… one of the biggest barriers can be our inability to forgive ourselves.

Yes, you read that right, our inability to forgive ourselves can really stop or slow our progress. We blame ourselves, whether we consciously know it or not for the problems we have, we choose to label our condition and carry that as opposed to going deeper and self-inspecting as to why we got sick. Which if we are honest is often due to lifestyle, and therefore we struggle to forgive ourselves in the process of recovery and healing.

So, I want to make it simple today and avoid delving too much into psychology. Now while this is a simple exercise, it is also really hard for some of us to do!

To forgive yourself, you must first love yourself. Let me say that again, “to forgive yourself, you must first love yourself.”

So here is your exercise. To be done twice a day, EVERYDAY for the next fortnight. Look yourself in the mirror, in the eyes, breathe and calmly say to yourself. “I love you”. Say this several times until you feel a little relaxed or more sincere.

It is not for everyone I know, but it is good for everyone!

I am excited to hear how you get on, love yourself first, forgive yourself second, and together we can help you reach the goals you are striving towards with your health.

With love

Tom